Demogorgon‘s Into Synth
The music of “Stranger Things” opening sequence
Introduction
You’ve probably been living under a rock if you haven’t heard of Netflix’s hit series “Stranger Things” (which yeah, is really that good).
Everyone talks about it: movie buffs, geeks, sci-fi fans, people who grew up in the 80’s and also lots (and lots) of designers who specifically praise and glorify the series opening sequence (which yeah, is really that good).
Major design blogs and websites have published a piece about it recently, which ultimately led to countless forum discussions about the ITC Benguiat font and its deep associations with early 80’s Stephen King’s novels typography.
Sarah Gless, in a great post, elaborated on what makes this title so powerful and effective, and even gave an appealing title to the 52 seconds-long opening sequence: “pure typographic porn” (which is kind of hilarious but also very true).
Now every time I watch the opening titles, I imagine groups of designers from around the globe, huddle around a laptop and stop breathing once that huge “N” re-enters the screen in its shiny, glowing red extreme close up…
Clearly Gless has a strong point. The smart use of that font, the cultural references it brings, the calculated slow motion and that shiny red color — are all brilliant choices (kudos to Imaginary Forces studio, creative director, Michelle Dougherty and animator, Eric Demeusy).
But for some reason, a huge part which makes this title sequence so magnificent is barely discussed.
No one talks about it in the same length or complexity, surely not compared to the obsessed typography descriptions. No one really puts any emphasis on it. It is simply “there”.
But if you watch those 52 seconds without the sound, you would soon realize the importance of it. In other words, what makes “Stranger Things” title that good (and by good I mean, dramatic, mesmerizing, frightening) is the soundtrack accompanying it.
The Synth Effect
The show’s theme song is an instrumental spine-chilling synthesizer score, composed by musicians Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of the Austin-based synth band Survive.
The duo, which interesting enough met when they were 13, has been making instrumental music from 2008. Listening to their early materials reveals that their exquisite pulsing synthesizers have been part of their musical DNA regardless of Netflix’s show.
However, when combined with the chilling extreme close ups of the show’s title, it is evident that this compressed rhythm becomes more powerful. It is something different from anything you’ve ever seen or heard. It sets the mood and the tone for the whole story.
The score is much more than a background noise, it has a presence of its own.
It’s also quite remarkable that such a short piece unfolds so many diverse references; the minimalist pounding melody resembles some of 1980’s famous movie scores, which helps us to believe the authenticity of the period in question.
Moreover, the familiarity of that sound enables us to go back in time (sort of). It triggers specific brain regions that are linked to our own autobiographical memories and emotions (at least according to this 2009 UCLA study), and even can cause us to experience physical responses (itchy fingers, sweaty palms, speedy heart beat).
In short, the undeniable association between music and human memories makes “Stranger Things” 1980’s synth sound all the more better.
Here are a couple of examples of synth scores that resemble the series opening soundtrack (this is of course driven by my own interpretation and taste):
1. The Shinning (1980)
Kubrick’s masterpiece “The Shinning” opening titles score has the same minimal yet “something’s very wrong” kind of vibe.
Kubrick hadn’t used an extreme close up like the Duffer brothers, but rather an “establishing shot”, named so since usually it’s the first shot of a new scene, designed to show the locale where the action is taking place.
This wide shot presents us with a wild raw nature surrounding (Glacier National Park in Montana) via aerial shot. The alarming ominous horns are accompanied by an isolated island in a lake, which the canyon walls around it are reflected in the waters.
The horns build up a psychic mood as the camera follows the path of a lone car traveling a thin serpentine road through a dense forest, tracks it down like a predator; backed up with the ululation sound effect that resembles a raptor, the viewers are able to sense it and perhaps even experience the raptor’s interest in the vehicle. Even when the view changes to a less intimidating mountain grasslands, the music remains ominous, striking, dramatic.
This is in fact “Dies Irae”, “The Day of Wrath”, a medieval Latin poem that is one of the most quoted poems in musical literature. It’s describing the day of judgment in which the last summoning souls will either be saved or delivered into eternal flames.
The decision to use such a, well… stressful reference, was determined by American composer and keyboardist, Wendy Williams, best known for her electronic music and movie scores.
Having been experimenting with synthesized classical music adaptations, she created the opening titles score based on Berlioz’ Symphony Fantastique, in which “Dies Irae” appears.
Later on, Williams (born Walter Carlos, later to undergo a gender reassignment surgery) recorded the score for Walt Disney’s sci-fi “Tron” (1982) and published additional 3 studio albums during the 1980's.
2. Altered States (1980)
Ken Russel’s “Altered States” is a sci-fi film telling the story of a Harvard professor of abnormal psychology, that conducts experiments on himself with a hallucinatory drug that may be causing him to regress genetically. The title sequence resembles not only Eleven’s water tank scenes and the power of type in motion, but also its mesmerizing score (skip to 2:16).
However, as oppose to the Duffers’ vision of avoiding using “orthodox” instruments such as violins (mainly in order to avoid the charm-like innocent sound of Spielberg's films), this title score is orchestrated by a 20-people philharmonic ensemble.
It is performed by “conventional” instruments like violins, trumpets, flutes, and pianos, but is played in an “unorthodox manner”. This brain-melting avant-garde score sounds the way it is because the musicians are playing their instruments intentionally wrong; for instance, the Flute players blew directly into their instruments instead of straight across the mouthpiece.
This was done under the lead of John Corigliano, an American composer of classical music. He recalls Russell requesting him to “go further and wilder” in the film’s score and to have “unusual sounds”.
With that in mind, Corigliano created a complex, multi-layered score based on what he refereed to as a “Motion Sonority” concept.
It basically meant that in order to avoid writing millions of notes, he simply added signals within the music sheets (oddly enough, a ‘C’ and a ‘G’ with a box around) that implied the 20-people orchestra to play “between and including those notes as fast as possible”, constantly changing the patters.
This “messed up” sound approach creates a horrific, haunting and complex score (that would later receive an Oscar nomination). Combined with the invasion of structured letters (a modified ITC Avant Garde Gothic), it is strikingly resembles the “Stranger Things” opening.
Those letters become a lens for the scene and convey a sense of encroachment. They shuffle themselves until the man within (William Hurt) is lost, a visual trick that is meant to emphasis the “disappearing” consciousnesses and later on, humanity of the main charter.
(This dismembered bits of type technique also appears in Ridley Scott’s Alien, both opening scenes done by Title designer, Richard Greenberg).
3. Contagion (2011)
Steven Soderbergh’s “horror thriller” chronicles the outbreak of a deadly worldwide epidemic that starts with an American woman returning from a Hong Kong business trip (Gwyneth Paltrow), only to die days later from a mysterious virus (that also kills her youngest son).
“Cotagion” is Soderbergh’s tenth film cooperation with composer, Cliff Martinez, ex. drummer of “Red hot chili peppers”(!).
Unlike our 1980’s references mentioned above, “Contagion” doesn’t have an “official” opening sequence. The movie simply begins with a wiry synth sound that functions as a connective tissue between spaces and characters (the camera is basically following the virus as it transmits itself via a series of touched surfaces, showing us the first casualties). The bone-chilling tone it sets, from the very beginning, is of suspense and tension, as Martinez describes so himself:
(My) mission was to magnify the fear factor. I tried to create the sound of anxiety
An important musical influence to the film’s ambient ‘cold’-haunted-sound was ‘Tangerine Dream’, a German electronic music collective founded in the 60's, which was also an inspiration for the Duffer brothers and for the “Survive” band.
It seems that the dark sound palette for “Contagion” fits so well to the plot, because the movie tells a “larger than life” kind of story: humanity vs. a virus. The electronic sound contributes to the emotional distance Soderbergh wanted to convey.
The viewers aren’t meant to engage emotionally, but rather intellectually. And while we do get to meet Mitch (Matt Damon), who’s lost his wife, the first American victim, his character provides a very loose skeleton for the movie’s structure. “Contagion” is not a one-man plot, but a broader story with multiple angles; the World Health Organization, journalists, administrators at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the government as well as ordinary citizens.
The synthesizer sound plays a crucial part in setting up the pace for all of those angels, characters and side-stories. It makes us feel the rhythm, the energy, the movement.
“my job was to help keep things moving along and moving quickly”, said Martinez when asked about his intentions.
In retrospective, this 80’s soundtrack has become an identifying mark for Martinez’s composition works; one of his latest projects is “The Knick”, a TV series directed by Soderbergh (2014), which follows the medical staff and its innovative surgeons at a New York hospital during the early 20th century.
The dominant musical genre of that era was the Ragtime, but both Martinez and Soderbergh did not want their soundtrack to sound like that.
Martinez eventually composed a postmodern synth sound with guitar lines and a warbling bass (that sounds a bit sinister). Accompanied with the hustling turn-of-the-century Manhattan, it creates a hyper-realism mode one cannot ignore.
3. Drive (2011)
Hyper-realism and a fantastic 1980’s sound (this time a bit more melodic) also repeat in Martinez’s composition for Nicholas Winding Refn’s “Drive” (2011).
The movie tells the story of a mysterious stuntman and mechanic (we don’t know his name), who moonlights as a getaway driver and finds himself in trouble when he helps out his neighbor, who he falls in love with, though she’s married (to a shady criminal who’s in prison).
This dark, hard-edged, extremely violent crime thriller has an ethereal retro euro-pop sound, to the request of Refn who wanted the music to “occasionally be abstract so viewers can see things from the driver’s perspective” (the main character portrayed by Ryan Gosling).
Though the movie features 2 memorable and successful distinguished synth-pop tracks (“A real hero” by College and Electric Youth, and “Night call” by Kavinsky), the dominant atmosphere is set by Martinez’s ambient sound textures.
The edgy vintage keyboards and distorted wind chimes work magic with the 2 complementary themes of “Drive”; on the one hand, extreme violence with an explicit graphical imagery, and on the other hand, a naive, soft and romantic fairy-tale.
The Upside-Down World has Never Sounded Better
To conclude, besides making the 1980’s period mainstream again, “Stranger Things” has landed another important accomplishment.
It has made instrumental analogue-synth music popular again (this time not just for Kraftwerk’s fans), and triggered a worldwide latent hunger for synth sounds.
In that sense, the opening sequence soundtrack (functioning as the threshold for the whole series) - is a great example of a raw, edgy and tension packed synth-based sound that sets the emotional tone of the story. It is both exhilarating and terrifying.
No violins would have accomplished this kind of effect.
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Original Main Photo: Eric Demeusy
